


Just Between Lovers

by Soloh



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-05-13 09:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14746371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soloh/pseuds/Soloh
Summary: Claire is content in her life with Frank, but is thrown into chaos when she wakes to find herself with a man she doesn't know underneath her, who claims to be her boyfriend.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> To get the feeling of the story listen to:
> 
> Dream Tonite by Alvvays
> 
> Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex

  
_I felt it in my chest - a constricting thrash of erratic beating that stretched to my limbs in electric shocks. My hands fisting the cool sheets beneath me for stability as my hips lifted ever closer to the waves of heated pleasure rushing and pulsating between my thighs, driving my body to a desperate release._

_I laid sprawled open, my body boneless and breath a heavy quiver._

_The caress of heated breath on my thigh however was thick with want, and the nuzzling of a rough stubbled cheek dragging back and forth in affection was a gentle but persistent reminder that all was not over. A smile began to form and I reached towards the hazy figure below me, seeking to bring him closer…_

_But my hand halted in crushing pressure._

  
                                                                                                                          _________

  
  
"Bloody damn." The moan burned my dry throat as the last fragments of my dream faded away, taking with it the promise of bliss and replaced with prickling pain.

I found my arm that had sought my phantom lover and screaming for release was pinned beneath another.

Frank.

We had met over a staggered stack of books in my Uncle Lamb's study near four years ago where his rather poor attempt at flirting consisted of babbling on about Jacobites while blushing at his own ineptitude to keep the fluster from his voice. I however thought him dear before our first hullo and we had been together ever since - that is until now.

I was in Edinburgh starting my residency while Frank stayed behind in Oxford, an already established professor, and we had been traveling back and forth these past months with the strain of distance felt by us both. We had thought we could manage and had mostly, but with only one solution to the problem that neither of us was willing to give, we decided by unspoken agreement to pretend there was no problem, maybe in hopes the other would give in, come _home_... However, the tension would usually dissipate when we laid next to one another like now - well maybe not just now. While Frank was a gentleman in everyway from his dress to etiquette, when he slept it became a battle to not be smothered alive.

With a grimace of pained irritation stinging my face I pushed Franks body just enough to pry my arm loose with no fear that he would wake,l since he slept like the dead.

Cradling my lifeless arm horribly numb and useless against my chest I began rubbing the feeling back into it - starting at my forearm then down to my hands mashed, stiff fingers and back again. My eyelids fluttering shut at the warming sensation of blood flowing back to my veins and my mind drifted to another hand, much larger then my own and began mimicking his motions. Fingers digging deep in my skin leaving bruises in their wake, moving in rhythm with his mouth that sought the depths of my flesh.

Just as my head tilted to it's side a loud snore from what should have been the object of my desire brought me back to reality.

"Jesus H. Christ, you are chasing a dream, Beauchamp." I whispered harshly to myself, rubbing my face in frustration to the point of seeing swirls of green and yellow stars behind my eyes.

With a groan I pushed my thick mass of tangled hair away as I reached over to my nightstand where my phone was kept. With blaring light that made my eyes nearly clench and teary, I read a blurry - _5: 30_. Work would be beckoning me soon.

No point in going back to bed I turned to Frank. So peacefully content in his own dreamworld I could have throttled him and slept fit for another hour. Yet, he looked so charming with his chestnut hair tousled all about making him look younger then his years with a thin sweet mouth parted just enough to cause my ears annoyance. But that was easily remedied.

I leaned into Frank and kissed him along the shell of his ear that could always elicit a shiver with the hope that he would wake and help smother the flame stoked with such exquisite skill, but no such luck. He only mumbled and turned further away from me into the soft white pillows.

I hung my head with a defeated sigh. Strike two.

Willing myself to live without fulfillment for a day, I went to Frank's ear resisting the urge to twist it and whispered, "Sleep tight old chum."An endearment he hated but hearing my Uncle Lamb call him so in passing I could never resist the urge to tease him even in sleep.

As I swung my legs over the bed to the waiting embrace of coffee, I was hit with remembrance of the sway of those same limbs pressed into broad shoulders with hair a storm of waves shielding his face from me.

It was a shade of torrid red that had me quick to clench my thighs.

"Damn, the bastard." I couldn't help but smile at how pathetic a thrill it gave me to know his color of hair. To know anything about him, really. For it wasn't the first time he haunted my dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To get the feeling of the story listen to:
> 
> Dream Tonite by Alvvays
> 
> Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex

 

I left the flat that morning greeted by a dank colored sky and a bitter cold smelling of dew that held promises of rain and ran back for an umbrella, Frank still asleep in bed.

 

Once I reached the hospital I was welcomely engulfed to distraction from the silliness of dreams to my own realized one. Filled with broken bones and gashes, and a suturing that led to being violently vomited on in a wave of slop that was strangely impressive for such a small girl and left me in dire need of a change.

 

By the time it was well after midday I found myself starved and made for a near empty wing of the hospital where I was alone, unbothered, and set to have my lunch. It was a bounty which consisted of a dodgy apple and two smashed granola bars that had been sitting in the back of my locker seemingly since my first appendectomy.

 

I ate around the brown blemishes of the apple focusing on the dulled reddened parts that were a pale comparison to the blaze of man in my twilight hours who refused to let me be. Now in the forefront of my mind I tried to recall a hint of nose, curl of lip, hue and shape to the eyes to flesh out the obnoxious mane of red but came up short. All that I knew for sure was that he had a body seeped in embers that rocketed down my spine, hands large with long fingers that knew my every line and curve like an imprint to his skin to never be forgotten, that he teased to rapturous pleasure with a mouth equally skilled.

 

Then there were those moments in-between before I woke where he would touch me with tenderness as if he knew me and I him. Be it lazy strokes at play along my ribs or a gentle kiss at the sweep of my hip that asked for nothing more. Once he even held me, surrounding me in bone deep warmth with the shadows encasing him, but not the hum of happiness he pressed to my curls. I could still feel the rumble of his burr, how it traveled across my skin as I curled ever closer, my hand over his that laid secure at my breast.

 

"Another dream, lass?" Startled, the half eaten apple slipped through my fingers, rolling comically away to the white clad shoes of my dear awful Geillie. A friendship born from blood and handcuffs, she knew all about the dreams back when I thought they were nothing but a sparse occurrence. It had been months now with no end in sight and I've regretted uttering a word of him to her since.

 

"Was he all hands and tongue again or did he finally give it to ye?" She asked, leaning against the wall with two hot drinks in hand, mouth grinning wide in a knowing gleam.

 

I stuck my hand out pleadingly to her in what I hoped was soothing chamomile, needing it's fortifying properties for the assault of my best friends interrogation with her one semester of psychology skills. Geillis picked up the apple and threw it away then came to sit next to me, scooting the drink away from my reach, her brow arching waiting for an answer.

  
  
“What do you think?" I rolled my eyes with a huff. To plea ignorance was akin to committing self inflicted harm to oneself and I cursed the deepening blush of pink on my glass face and the bastard who put it there.

 

"Hmph," She grunted, finally relenting and giving up the goods. Chamomile, it was. I could tell before the hot liquid hit my tongue and lavished in the herbal sweetness when it did.

 

"Left ye wanting, aye?" Geillis stirred her brew with a swish of her wrist. "Even in dreams men ken how to disappoint a lass."

 

"He never disappoints." The words spilled from my lips despite myself, into a devilish smile that had Geillis urging me to continue while stealing my granola bar - that she quickly frowned at when she felt the state if it- and I divulged the details of my rather wanton sleep slash uneventful waking.

 

With crumbles dusting her lips and blue scrubs she imparted her analysis of me like a gift I never asked for. "It's a sign Claire." She clicked her tongue."Yer man's not fit for ye if yer having affairs of the mind and by the sounds of it yer lad could teach the professor a thing or two."

 

She leaned over to me, lips ruby red, ”And that's just the mouth think about his cock."

 

“Shut up, Geillis!" I hissed as if Frank was about to appear from nowhere. Not the he would. He kept away from the hospital like it held the ten plagues, which was very odd since he was a proper hypochondriac - a hospital should be a haven to him. Sometimes I did wonder if that was part of my appeal,though. A free doctor and checkup at his disposal, wearing a white lab coat with nothing underneath an added bonus.

 

"It's not an affair! He's a figment of my imagination. I could be fantasizing about the bloody prince of England for all I know." I said, sacrificing the last of my meager lunch and tossed it with just enough force at Geillies sun kissed head to hopefully drop the subject. Instead, she let out a throaty laugh and pocketed the shiny wrapped bar.

 

"You think the prince has a pair of beady eyes. Me -" Geillis cat grinned leaning back against the wall, letting her finger drag along the rim of her drink. "Weel, he's the only englishmen I'd kneel to, that's fer sure."

 

"Curtsy." I reminded her as my face was splitting from the image of an encounter that would undoubtedly start and end in scandal. "You curtsy when you meet royalty."

 

Geillis waved her hand at the minor detail, never one for discouragement."Now back to yon ginge -"

 

"Back to nothing," I told her as the drink in my hand was slowly becoming tepid." I rather not have another round of guess who eating up my time over something so trivial." Then I added for emphasis, "With no meaning what-so-ever."

 

"There's always a meaning to what scuttles in the mind when it's most free, lass." Geillis fixed her gaze on me with bright emerald eyes she would so often proclaim were inherited from a dark souled ancestor. Staring into them now and so often before I believed it.

 

Seeing as I was no longer protesting with my shoulders deflating in a long resigned exhale, Geillis continued.

 

"I only speak the truth as I see it." She narrowed her eyes at me. "Yer heart seeks what it's missing - warmth, intimacy - something to keep ye whole while the professor is away. But now it's even when he's here for the few days that he attempts to visit ye and yer still wanting in elsewhere."

 

"Elsewhere is nothing more then an illusion. A mindless romp between sheets is all." I contested even if the mention of Frank's rare visits, as opposed to my frequent ones to him, left a hollow pang in my belly.

 

"Then why is it another man and not yer own that ye yearn for? Why do you let this stranger call to ye and you to him?"

 

"Call to…?" I asked in confusion, mild anger and a little spooked.

 

My pager went off then leaving any more talk to hang in the air as I stood with a half hearted wave goodbye as I went to finish the last of my day.

 

I wasn't even gone past a minute when my phone pinged with a text of a promise to keep ones glob shut.

 

A second later and another ping, I sent Geillie a message that she would break her word by next week and would owe me a pint.

 

  
__________

 

 

The sky was streaked in the dusky haze of a setting sun lost in dour gray clouds by the time my shift ended. I walked down every bump and turn of the streets, one after another home as a soft mist began to fall, catching in the whistling gusts of chilled air and lightly sprinkled my face down to the wave of each brown lock. I pulled out the umbrella I had tucked at my arm at the ready, but it did little to shield from the wind.

 

Gathering my dark blue coat tighter around me, I thought about Frank. He would be leaving again soon with a kiss on my cheek of regret he couldn't stay longer and I would feel a gaping absence but always I would settle in to my routine, quick to bury the distance between us in work that was always second breath to me. So easily it could be done without a second thought and I couldn't help feel guilt. Especially now as Geillie pointed out, how I sought another, real or not. But, Christ did he feel real.

 

More real sometimes then the one I was afraid to confront, to possibly make matters worse.

 

I was halfway to my flat as the drizzle whipped around me, my mind a treacherous minefield of how to fix the cracks before they began to chip, when my phone started going off.I patted my pockets then realized I had thrown the battered thing in my bag. Ruffling through it for what felt like a solid eternity (really just two rounds of incessant noise) I found it amongst the chaos, alight with Frank's picture - a blur of his hand blocking his face. Always with the calls never a text for a man who was all thumbs.

 

I smiled in relief, eager to hear his voice to quell the unease taking hold of me. However, before I could swipe to answer, the drizzle became a downpour.

 

Puddles began to form, rippling from the cascade of rain and I swerved to avoid them, nearly colliding into passerbys doing so. It was a habit from childhood, back when I had an irrational fear of hidden sharp tooth creatures, clad in scales and waiting to drag me to the far down murky depths if I dared to step through.Other times my younger self could stare at the smooth expanse of water and instead see an entrance to a fathomless blue sky world to endlessly drop through. The only time I could cross puddles unafraid was when the evening stars were out at night, where I could grab hold of one to pull me safe away.

 

But only if I dared to step through.

 

Or pushed from behind.

 

In a stumble.

 

To a fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The puddles thing is straight from Voyager just a bit reworded.  
> *Water symbolizes new life and an unconcious mind.
> 
> Ok, sooo long wait for this story and I'm sorry. I lost my files, got depressed and wrote another entirely different story, Sorcha, instead. I don't have this story written in it's entirety like I wanted and at the last miute changed some details but hopefully it will be fun. I want this story to be a mindless write of Jamie and Claire to help with some writers block I have with some other fics I'm tooling with. So just ride the wave of silliness if you like.
> 
> Thank you for reading!!!!


	3. Chapter 3

My first waking thought was a jumbled fog of incoherence that ripped every vessel and tissue within my skull, worse then a whiskey fueled hangover where the only cure was immediate withdrawal from reality and I did just that.

The second time I stirred was with a sluggish awareness that I was indeed, victoriously, not dead with only a vague notion that I was lying in the comfort of a bed seeping in warmth and not much else. No wonderment of how I got there, or even the day or month. It was irrelevant to a mind still adrift, where images fluttered in fragmented shapes, bursted with streams of dancing color, and simply, I just didn’t care. Needing no other reassurances but the bed I laid upon, I burrowed further into the sheets preferring sweet oblivion for how ever long I could have her.

However, I wasn’t expecting for my bed to mumble back at me with parted lips breathing hot along my neck.

To be pulled flush to hips of another, the beginning’s of a waking self making it’s presence known quite firmly as I melted into the pocket of heat between this others thighs.

Pressed to a torso that heaved with muscle along the arch of my back, an odd contrast to the lithe body whose name lingered in misty memory, far from the tip of my tongue.

It was then I cracked an inquisitive, blurring eye open to a room coated in quiet silver, where I tried more earnestly to recall a time before the now that pressured at my temples. But I was interrupted by the roaming touch of fingertips as they stroked lazy patterns past the slope of my bared hip. A gentle questioning - To sleep, or no?

I banished the swell of confusion for the promise of  desire. I moved heavy, languidly, as if in a dream (Was it a dream?) turning towards the man who was piecing himself slowly back together from the haze. My heartbeat hitched to see him, to know him again and it did with a stinging snap, all of him at once if only to show the glaring difference to the stranger beside me cast in dappled shadows.

A man who raised a hand to cup my cheek speaking another mumble of nonsensical,  _Sass-nak_ , that had me wrenching away in panic.

Who tumbled with me in a tangled embrace of sheets and thrashing limbs to the hard wooden floors, where I kneed the son of a shit deep with a furious twist in his groin -  _“Dia, mo bhail!_ ” - grabbing my phone with a stumbling step to the closest door to seek refuge…

To the bathroom.  

Fuck! Fucking! Fuck!!

“Claire?!”

With a click of the lock, I leaned against the solid slab of wood, falling to my heels and tile, my heart hammering as he moaned my name - How did he know my name?

_“Ifrinn naomh!”_

I relished in the bloody bastards cry (triumphantly smug, really) as I turned on my phone to call for help but instead I was met with an image that cracked my sanity in two.

The lock screen.

My face flushed in happiness, pressed to his no longer shadowed in murky dimness but alight with hair that very wave, that very shade of torrid red that had been a blushing revelation to me.

My heart stilled with a chill.

I looked through the photos with trembling fingers swiping madly. Of him. Us. Together. Unimportant moments, the in-between of a life I couldn’t remember living but clearly me in all. Another swipe had me squeaking, “Jesus .H. Christ!” as I pressed the phone to my chest in a crimson thump, another stab of mania making me faint.

Fingers clawing at my scalp, I traced the map of memories to the point where my brain threatened to spasm, pushing forward past the throb on to a morning uneventful, to the end of a tiring shift where I was to go home to Frank. Yes, Frank waiting for me (was he still?). But then it rained, pouring pellets that whipped sharp against my face, I ran … and then what?

A single pound at the door knocked me forward in a startle just like -

Falling!

In the rain, straight into a pool of a rippling tide so blue, fathomless like his eyes, to the here and now -

“Are ye alright, Sassenach?”

To a dream made flesh and blood real.

“Beauchamp, you’ve gone insane.”

I sat crumpled as reason and logic abandoned me, leaning my head against the door, a movement mirrored on the other side with a soft tap and a strained sigh.

“Ye ken all ye needed to do was say ye had to piss, not throttle me in the process.” Humor tinged with ache laced the strangers voice that penetrated through the wood straight to my beating chest. It was deep, calming almost, rooting me to this impossible reality I still didn’t believe in.

And why should I?

Maybe this is nothing more than a vivid nightmare gone too far.

A breakfast of day old curry causing me to hallucinate. (Wouldn’t be the first of my beloveds betrayal)

Anything else but the insanity of being trapped in another life.

Sitting there with questions piling higher and higher in suffocating anxiety wasn’t doing me any good. So I opened the door, the final test of truth.

What once was a figment of indulgent imagination sat like me, on the ground, so very close, so thoroughly confused and very real indeed. Even with a fury of pictures dizzying my head of this man, I did what I had always wanted to do in those moments of intimacy between us. I looked at him.

A stubbled face of golden skin, a beautiful gaze seeking answers I couldn’t give or hold, with hair that curled all over just like in dreams where I felt the soft trail of it brush along my skin..He was also terribly shirtless (I belatedly realized I was wearing his shirt of faint musk and not much else, tugging the hem over my bruised knees) and cradling his offended appendage over his plaid pants that had me feeling mildly guilty but still justifiably smug.

“I ken ye like to stare at me, Sassenach, and I you, but ye care to tell me what had you thrashing mightily about? I would be proud of ye if I werena the one on the suffering end.” Despite his brows being knit together in distress the corners of his mouth were quirked up in amusement, I could tell for my benefit only and it put me at ease to know this stranger was at the very least kindly. As well as patient as he waited for a reply that stumbled on my tongue.

“How badly did I pummel you?” My first words spoken to him sounded awkward to my ears. I wanted to ask him a million other things not one of those being his health - Who are you? Is this purgatory? Why are you very, very naked in my phone? But how to do that without coming across as raving mad was beyond me.

“I wouldna call being attacked by a crazed vixen a wee pummel. I meant what I said, ye downright tried to butcher my bawls.” He narrowed his eyes at me but the smile only grew wider and I felt my own lips begin to twitch. “Do ye no want to look?”

“Me?” Just when my pulse was beginning to settle.

“Aye, you Dr. Beauchamp, or do I have to sue ye for bodily injury which I’m damn well tempted to.” He was already pulling down the waistband past his navel where the path of hairs darkened to a russet. My instinct was to screw my eyes shut and bury my face in the softness of his shirt, but I had already seen it, (felt it too) and I was a doctor first and foremost no matter the circumstances…

Pushing my fright of curls aside, I leaned forward to his partial reveal and could see that he was Perfectly intact. Perfectly so. However, my eyes were drawn to the spectacular bruise I delivered off to the side that I couldn’t help but admire.

“No harm done, I just missed your vital organs.” The Scot opened his mouth to protest that statement when I poked the bluish splotch making him hiss. If I needed further proof of his existence I could feel it right then and there in a shiver along his soft skin to mine. “But here will need some ice…” Whoever you are.

“If ye say so.” he eyed me unconvinced as he drew the waistband back, probably wanting to seek the second invaluable opinion of Frank’s favorite webmd. But then his eyes softened towards me in more then just kindness, holding a tenderness of heart that crinkled at the corner of his eyes.

“Maybe some ice for you as well, aye Sassenach?” He reached out to my own discolored patch blooming on my knees, using the backs of his fingers to gently soothe my aches away. A touch so familiar I had felt many times before in dreams of loneliness, want and need that I hesitated to pull away.

“So what was it that gave ye a start this  _verra_  early morning,  _mo ghràidh?_ ” His hand felt of embers as it rested just above the bruising with his thumb brushing the raised bumps of my skin smooth. Still, I didn’t move.

“A nightmare is all it was.” I replied a little breathless,  barely registering what I was now certain was gaelic sprout from his lips, though the meaning was a mystery. My eyes were more focused on the ruddy back of his broad hand and how I should push it far from me before it traveled upward past the hem of white.

“I wouldna call that a wee nightmare. Tell me what wretch of a creature spooked ye so for me to suffer in it’s place. It might do ye some good.”

That wretch was Frank.

I abruptly raised myself on wobbled legs and smoothed the shirt down flat, leaving him befuddled at my feet.

“That bad?” He asked concerned. I assured him it was nothing, but the flash of skepticism lit his gaze, scrutinizing the falseness of my words that were blatant even to me before schooling his face back to ease. For me again.

“You need ice.” I need to leave. Find Frank, wherever he is. Would he even know me? Listen to me? Believe me? Geillis then…Who will then promptly throw me in a sanitarium, electrodes in hand, straight jacket in the other with the most joyous face of delight to grace her lovely wicked face. An early birthday present for her if anything.

Christ, who was I to talk to?

“A hand, Sassenach?” The Scots burr interrupted another round of ‘what the living hell do I do’ as he stuck his hand out and I stared at it rather dimly. “Och, I will no’ bite ye, no’ now anyway. I’ll get my revenge on ye when ye least expect it.” He gave a weak attempt at a wink and I wondered if my other self had ever found that attractive.

“Try anything and you’ll get more then a knee from me, with bull’s-eye aim too.” His hand completely engulfed mine when clasped together and held it captive to his broad chest of auburn once he was raised to a height that towered over me.

“I’m counting on it, wee vixen.” A smirk plastered his face that had me crossed between bashing his nose and blushing.

“You’re going to be impossibly annoying aren’t you?” I said as I pulled myself from his grip, losing the heat of him to the coolness of the air around.

He raised a brow chuckling, “Och, we’ve been together this long and yer just finding that out now, lass?”

I didn’t bother to ponder how long that was, I threw it to the pyre with all the other burning questions.

I left him to the room I didn’t know, to a hallway I didn’t remember, dawdling around until the soft patter of my steps brought me to a kitchen most familiar, minus one bare arse redhead, with only a single thought upfront in my mind besides where the whisky was.

How do I get back home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, for the late chapter. Sometimes life gets in the way and the writing bug goes right to the pits.
> 
> Dia, mo bhail - God, my bawls 
> 
> Ifrinn naomh - Holy hell


	4. Chapter 4

I never wondered what his name was.

 

It was always hidden away in quaking gasps that sprouted from my lips, to moans of singing pleasure muffled in the soft depths of pillows and curls, where the pulls of my reality would awaken me to snores and stolen blankets, sometimes my own cold caress clinging to the last warm whisper of his touch, this imaginary wisp of light who never needed a name.

 

Now was different.

 

A stack of mail laid atop the kitchen table where my name crossed the white, beneath maybe his. I grabbed the envelopes to read only to let it fall through my fingers as I walked towards the refrigerator littered in children's drawings with messy swipes of crayons. There were happy clouds with streams of rainbows that zigged and zagged, stick figures with too many limbs or not enough playing ball in scribbled fields of purple and yellow, spikey blobs eating other spikey blobs with red smiles of sharp tooth delight…

 

It was then I was convinced I was living in a damn deranged fun house that had me clenching my belly, feeling it expand to a balloon sized plumpness that encased a small beating heart, pulsing in unison with mine.

 

Damn the ice, I went to look for the Scots supply of anything liquid that could scald the throat of it's flesh and numb the brain to a comatose bliss, which is when my eye caught an apple on the counter. A ceramic mug of ladybug red with bold print proclamations along it's curve and an eyeglass wearing inchworm along the rim, chipped in half but still squiggling away.

 

The Scot was a school teacher.

 

I whispered my thanks to the god of this unholy world and poured him and myself a drink of the anything liquid that sat beyond the mug directly down my throat.

 

Beautiful. Burning -

 

"Are you going to share?" A teasing voice behind me asked as I wiped the golden dribble from my lips.

 

"What are you doing walking about?" I rasped as the drink was doing it's job splendidly horrid. I could see his mouth twitch and I wondered if I could slip him a pill. The drowsy kind. An extra dose for 6'4 of irritation.

 

"I'm over there lying in misery while you are having yer way with that bottle like it's my -

 

"Shut up and sit." I ordered with an _entirely_ whisky infused burn of cheek. He did, gently, with a cheeky grin that made me wish he'd stuff it. And with that unhelpful thought of midnight's past where he did exactly that, I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, welcoming the breath of chilly frost that misted down my face through the thin cotton that pricked at my breasts. Something that wasn't just appreciated by me, as I turned around to an open gaze locked straight center that reminded me what little I was wearing...and him. Not that it was hard to forget, only harder to ignore as the bright kitchen light significantly enhanced what the bathrooms failed to.

 

"Here you are, bloody Scot." I tossed the pack his way. My aim was better, his hands were faster.

 

"I've been called a great many filthy things this morning. Some I greatly admired for their creativity and passion." he quirked a brow at me and I damned the smile that pinched at my cheeks with a bite of suppression as I remembered exactly what was said when I jammed my knee into him hoping to feel for a crackle of bone. "But how about ye call this puir feeble man just Jamie."

 

_Jamie_ . His name was _Jamie_ .

 

"I never did say sorry did I.. _Jamie_ ?" His name tasted sweet along my tongue that dampened the burn of alcohol but not the rise of heat that seemed to stain my face since waking in a dreams embrace."I'll get you some aspirin to help with the swelling and pain."

 

"I'd rather have a wee nip of that concoction of evil you were guzzling down, if ye please?" Jamie asked as he slinked further down in the chair, settling himself to the cold relief without even a shiver along his figure.

 

"That concoction will grow you another limb out your arse but it won't help with the swelling."

 

"You are a cruel one this morning, _mo nighean donn."_ Jamie laughed while raking his fingers through his thick and wild hair, giving me another string of gibberish insults, of that I was sure of.

 

I turned away with a tug at the shirt knowing where a fiend of my own creation's eyes were now set, pulling at the cabinet door and getting lucky on the first try where glasses shined like crystal alongside bottles of false hope for mind splitting hangovers placed right by.

 

I dropped two white pills into his palm that he chucked in his mouth and handed him a glass of water in the other that he quickly gulped down as my phone blared off, giving me a jolt. I knew that particular alarm well and had no plans on fulfilling it's command. I reached for it on the table, stabbing my finger at the screen to silence it.

 

"Work is calling ye, Sassenach, "Jamie said with a grimace, hitting his chest at a stubborn lodging of the aspirin. "Which means mine will be roaring after me soon enough."

 

"Can you function in your state?" I leaned against the counter, observing his form a bit guilty- his legs splayed wide from a pain he really didn't deserve, even if I was still proud at taking down a mountain.

 

"I teach the bitty terrors, Sassenach. I've been slammed in the shins more times then I can count and drenched head to toe with snot and vomit." Jamie spoke as it was a common occurrence, waving off his current aches in what he had early accused was a butchering. "Dinna fash, I'll give a fistful of bribery to whoever keeps still the longest."

 

His tired set of eyes said he'd do exactly that. "You should at least sleep with what little time you have."

 

"If that's what _mo bean-glic_ advises, I shall obey." Jamie stood with a grunt but his eyes regarded me with sincerity as they met mine.

 

"May ye have a day of broken bones and ruptured spleens to mend to forget this night, _mo chridhe._ But if the trouble comes to ye again, call me." He leaned forward in what I thought was an unbalanced sway and my arms moved forward to brace myself, eyes clenched for a hard plummet. Instead I was met with a press of fervent warmth, soft and lingering, stripping me of conscious thought as it was something never allowed to me, the hours of night never long enough.

 

"If ye keep on with that look I'll risk my groin bursting here wi' you on the table." No teasing in his voice, no curl of lip in jest, only a gentle warning of hands that gripped my hips, rucking up the hem.

 

Jamie nudged his nose against mine and walked away with an uneven step, leaving me just as lopsided.

 

Well, there was no avoiding that, I assured myself.

 

None.

 

With another slip of drink and once more to test my own theory of spontaneous growth, I crept back to the room where Jamie had taken my orders to heart, drifting away with ice still firmly in place. I quietly rummaged through the drawers of clothes new and familiar, his with mine mixed together to fully dress with coat on tight, leaving without a hell of an idea where to go or even where I was.

 

Outside I was met with the scent of damp, crisp autumn air, that had my flesh rising in tingly goosebumps despite the coat and my eyes darted to the soft pale glow of a morning sky.

 

For once I prayed for rain.

 

Wasn't that all I needed? A splash of water to awaken me in a body hooked to wires and machines, keeping my heart and lungs in a steady rise and fall or was I a blink away lying in a pooling puddle on the hard cement. Alone. Cold. Waiting in the dark.

 

Perhaps it was like the movies where a spell had to break, a lesson to be learned for an angel to gain it's wings or simply a click of ruby heels with a wish for my heart's desire.

 

But wasn't that what brought me here?

 

_Why do you let this stranger call to ye and you to him?_

 

Maybe Frank would be the one to call out to me now, call me back home.

 

_Why is it another man and not yer own that ye yearn for?_

 

Maybe all I needed was to let my unconscious infatuation have it's way, curiosity satisfied. I thumbed my bottom lip, his caress still afflicting me down to my veins in a flare. I was part way there in that respect.

 

While I wandered my phone would buzz, disrupting my stride, this life beckoning me to accept it as it's own. A flash of Geillis' face on a sunny day I did remember, flipping me the finger with frosting on her nose and murder in her shining green eyes. My Gellie, warming my heart even in this other world. I wanted to talk to her, tell her every mad thing, but four white walls prevented me from doing so.

 

Another flash that called for me was Jamie. I avoided him.

 

I used my phone in search for one man who existed only in academic articles, barely a trace of him anywhere else and living far away, out of reach across the sea. What would I have even done or said if he were here? I asked myself, even as my eyes began to prick at the corners.

 

As I walked down the sidewalk with a dragging step, I saw ahead of me a murky splatter of drain water still, wide and deep. I whispered Dorothy's magic words of hope and took one step and then another with a splattering smack of my boots.

 

I opened my eyes to a whirling stretch of my distorted reflection and my ankles stone cold wet.

 

Well, damn.

 

________

 

It was getting dark and colder by the minute. My feet ached, my stomach twisted angrily from hunger and there was only one place for me to go...

 

I stared at the door knowing what waited for me on the other side. A spell to be broken. A lesson to learn. A curiosity to be quelled.

 

Jamie was a stranger to me, I reasoned, though not entirely so, I countered. He had a smile that annoyed me to no end, that sought to calm me if only I'd allow and a filthy type of handsome I couldn't deny to be drawn to. But above it all, before all this nonsense, what I knew for sure since the beginning was that I had wanted to know him. The only reason for my being here that made sense.

 

My hands dove in the deep pockets of my coat, hoping old habits had carried over and met a jingle of metal. I fiddled with the keys until one finally slid in and a sharp inhale of breath filled my lungs.

 

"Sassenach?" Jamie's drowsy voice called to me from the living room where he sat on the couch with his copper hair sticking forever on end. Looking up at the ticking clock, he outstretched his hand to me. I slowly crossed the distance between us and took it, shyly, pushing outside thoughts of hazel eyes away and focusing on the blue as Jamie settled me close.

 

"Yer a wee bit early, today." Jamie yawned, rubbing his face of sleep. "You should have called so I could have met ye. Wait -" He paused with a squint and tilt to the head. "Did ye?"

 

I shook my head and inquired about his day to distract me from mine and his close proximity.

 

"The rascals were sweet with me today. Puir Mr. Fraser this and that after I told them I got into a tussle with a _bansidhe._ " A mischievous glint lit his glance." Didna jostle myself too bad either, need another keek?" I bloomed a tinge of pink. Will this life never let me breathe?

 

"You've been quite a _flùr dearg_ today." Jamie remarked with a self pleasing grin.

 

"Is that good or bad?" Blushing flower, he murmured, stroking my heated cheek down to the corner of my lips.

 

"Good for my ego to know ye still like this bloody Scot. Bad for me too cause I still canna do a damn thing about it." He leaned in close and I felt my breath quicken only to have it sputter out as instead he asked-

 

"Your day then? You were a quiet one, I texted ye -"

 

"It was a busy day." I spoke fast and curtly, hushing him and I squirmed under his stare, his silence, how he moved away from me.

 

"Ye ken the worst dream I ever had?" Jamie asked suddenly, not waiting for an answer as he continued. "Tree roots growing inside my head, big and gnarled, growing and swelling, pushing out through my eyes down my throat to choke me. Thought my skull would crack and I’d wake hearing the sound of the bones popping apart,” his hands animated the scene as if words lacked description. They didn't. "Sort of a juicy, cracking noise - "

 

I wrinkled my nose at him, feeling those same crawling protrusions invading my own insides. Not caring for where he was leading to I interjected, "Best dream then?"

 

Jamie tucked my frizzy curls behind my ear, letting his fingers thread through the tresses, not at all intmidated by the riotous state of them that _others_ had. "You. Always."

 

"Don't be romantic." I rolled my eyes and his hand halted it's movements. Another strike against me and Jamie made no attempt to hide the flicker in his eyes of my flippant regard, searching my own for what he considered an oddness in me and I made a mental note to watch my words with more caution.

 

"I hardly dream of anything, Sassenach." He pulled his hand away, yet he gave me a devious little grin to hide his noticed change in me. "But there was this one, a verra odd one, where ye tried to gut me with a pitchfork."

 

"A pitchfork?"

 

"Aye, and I was on the ground fearing for my life while you hovered above me calling me an oof." His eye went wide as if he was experiencing the mortal peril of impalement right then and there while his lips quivered from an impending laugh.

 

"What the hell is an oof?" I asked as a smile began to form and his grew wider seeing the response he wanted from me.

 

"Me, apparently," he chuckled, "Ye ken yer always after my bawls even in dreams." I laughed, whole and real, the first since waking.

 

"Well, you must have deserved it."

 

"I got the impression I did and that I would probably welcome more for just one bonny touch. Or is that too romantic for ye?" His hand found mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.

 

"I honestly don't know what to think of you." I didn't and that was probably why I was here. To find out.

 

"Nor I you." He replied solemnly and his grip on me grew tighter." I told ye long ago that there was a truth between us. That you were entitled to your secrets whatever they be, and I promise not to ask anymore after this day but what's been on your mind, Claire? I wish to know the truth of ye to help ye if I can?"

 

I looked up from our hands entwined, his so much larger, eclipsing mine. There wasn't anything I could tell him but the words fell from my mouth eager (desperate) to unload what had been pressuring at my chest.

 

"What if I were a stranger to you who lost her way home?" I asked knowing how stange I sounded. "Had no way of finding it?"

 

There was no hesitation when he answered me, strong and steady, absolute. "I'd treat you tender and ask how I could help." Jamie pressed his forehead to mine with his breath tickling my face as he spoke again.

 

"How can I help ye stranger?" He smiled kindly and I felt my eyelids flutter closed.

 

"This helps." For whatever reason his touch always had a way with me.

 

"Then trust me to keep you safe, home is always _here."_ Jamie gathered me to his chest where he whispered soothingly in the nestle of curls at my ear, words that held no meaning to me yet eased my strained heart to a glowing warmth.

 

How bad could this really be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really, really, messy but I can't stare at this anymore. I couldn't get all the parts to mesh well (Claire's conflicting emotions scattered my brain) so it's a little more blunt and to the point but now Claire is invested in exploring this world (Jamie!) So there's that at least.
> 
> The part with the nightmare of roots is from the first Outlander book (that description just stayed with me), and the part with the pitchfork is from my first fic, Bad Luck Follows.where at first meeting, Claire tries to help keep Jamie from falling…with a pitchfork...and kinda, almost stabs him (apparently I'm making a Tarantino-esque world where everything is connected). This entire sequence however isn't even needed but I got stuck on the idea of wanting Claire to be relaxed with Jamie, like in the book where they're sitting by the fire and he comforts her. Maybe later I'll take it out.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

Jamie

 

There was something different with Claire, that Jamie knew. Throughout class that day with the wee ones, he had tried to puzzle out what had shaken Claire so. Jamie knew it wasn't a matter of her being cross with him like when he admired her ever growing arse for the fat, sweet thing it was. Aloud. Her revenge at the time had been to bite his lip sore, most pleasantly as he recalled.

 

So Jamie brought forth memories of the day before, seeking whatever signs of disturbance that he'd obviously missed with his Sassenach.

 

A morning where the burn of desire had awoken them with need - hands roaming over warm supple skin, fingers enticing one to a gasp, teasing the other to a moan while mouths marked tender flesh to a glowing blush until finally, with breath and hearts heaving as one, they melted to one another in a shared bliss. He, nestled in the soft curve of his hearts shoulder as she, threaded her fingertips through his dampen locks - twisting and smoothing.

 

A lost cause the both of them.

 

Reluctantly they had parted from their world beneath the covers, where Jamie haltingly whispered about having perhaps created a sprig of life that had Claire shy and beaming. He then fed her a breakfast that wasn't the spackle of dry cereal she preferred eating by the handful and sent off his _Sanasachd_ with a thorough kiss to keep her warm from the sharp slap of the Scottish wind. He remembered Claire was heavy lidded in her whisky eyes as she left, but it was coupled with a smile of excitement for work she found so fulfilling and a flush of cheeks at being well loved by him that Jamie knew his own face mirrored as well.

 

Jamie then dove towards the end of that day, when he met Claire after a long shift, both tousled haired and huddled together under a bright starry sky. Her brown curls were slowly escaping from her bun and soon her hair tie would be lost forever as another battle would be lost to the sightly kraken on her head. An observation that earned him a hard pinch at the ribs and her, the final tug to free the beast he adored so very much.

 

They talked of his sister, Jenny - Jamie had crossed himself just thinking about her out in the unforgiving, bleak expanse of the ocean in nothing but the smallest of sailing boats - How there was still no word from her and Ian if they had made it to South Africa yet. Claire had pulled him by his coat and told him to stop his bloody worrying, Jenny could calm a tsunami with nothing but a glare. There was nothing to fear. She kissed him then, loving and long, leaving all his worries to the wind whipping around them.

 

They walked home happy.

 

To bed again filled with love.

 

No, it wasn't that, Jamie had thought. Nothing there to explain the change her.

 

His mind then spiraled to the last time Claire looked despondent, exhausted with more then just fatigue. Was there a moment where her heart ached and he didn't see? He was consumed with her until exhaustion overtook him, waking on the couch to her sullen face that he tried to put a smile to and failed as she spoke of feeling lost. A lass with a glass face, to not know she had felt such a way had shamed him and all Jamie could do was hold her in his arms.

 

He only wished there was more he could do.

 

Now, as a brand new day began, Jamie wondered if Claire was on the mend. She sat in front of him, frizzled with sleep still clinging to her and red of cheek as she was now prone to be of late. But then she gave him a look of keen interest that sparked a hope that her troubles were maybe past. He had made up his mind to at the very least distract her from her thoughts, whatever they may be.

 

Jamie was very good at that.

 

________

 

Claire

 

I was surprised I was able to sleep with him so close, but not as near as the morning before. The dark patch gracing him from groin to hip had Jamie splayed on his back and me off to the side of a still foreign bed. Room. Home. When we parted I felt the loss of his embrace where I had surrendered to fear and heartache that he so easily cast away. A touch gently behind my ear, a rhythmic stroke from neck to back that had me sinking further to the heat at his breast - the slow steady thump of his heart that whispered to my own and all the while soothing me with incomprehensible speech.

 

But in the quiet night, as I slipped in to bed, Jamie's eyes opened to mine, his palm crossing the distance, gentle and reassuring in my keeping and only then did I finally succumb to a dreamless slumber. As long as I trusted him I would find some semblance of peace here, I thought. That is untiI I woke to the sound of twin alarms. Mine I swatted, throwing a pillow over my head not yet ready to seize the day and find what awaited me. Either my recognisable Englishman, the Scotsman, or someone completely new, God help me.

 

A groan of gaelic signaled where I was still and with who. No spell was broken at the stroke of midnight apparently. I felt myself sigh with either relief or frustration, I wasn't sure.

 

With a shuffle of the mattress and walk around the room, I peeked through the narrow opening of my pillow and tangled streaks of hair and saw Jamie turned from me, digging for clothes that were quickly pilling in his fists. The shaft of bathroom light highlighted the line of his backbone running from the hard muscled contours of shoulders down to narrow hips that curved to a squared roundness. I quickly smothered my face to the soft linen as an absurd urge to giggle burned my throat while a sensation all too familiar coiled hot in my belly.

 

Harmless, I told myself. Looking was completely harmless. I did worse in dreams and so did he. But now I could no longer blame an attraction or actions on the imaginary when _it_ was very real and present before me. Where a casual observation could turn in to a tender kiss, that could push me flat against a tabletop completely at his mercy or hard and fast up against the wall. And then there was the bed...I pushed myself harder against the sheets until my lungs ached from lack of air. I didn't want to think about the rules and boundaries I was breaking in the world of _what if_ I found myself in. I would figure something out. The only problem was would Jamie let me.

 

"Where the hell….Och! There ye are wee bastard." Jamie mumbled to himself, pulling me from the laws morality as they turned and turned into a dizzying round.

 

I lifted the pillow once more to see what the Scot was prattling on about. He was clothed now, but just barely. Trousers were attired and well fitted (my traitorous mind chimed in) and his arms were just slipping into a plaid button down when he caught my eye and replied with his ridiculous wink. His only genetic defect from what I could tell.

 

"How did ye sleep, Sassenach?" Jamie stopped the fumbling of his buttons. He had promised not to press me further last night and gave only a cautious query to my being.

 

"It was all well until my alarm and yours went off." Then to ease him I added, "Today is better. Not as clouded as before."

 

"That's a start. And I hope your day gets brighter ever more." Jamie had answered with a cheek to cheek grin and sat at the edge of the bed beside me as he fiddled with the buttons once more. I sat up fully clothed in shirt and pajama bottoms. There would be no repeat of yesterday's lack of attire from me.

 

"Why is a school teacher up this early, anyhow? Paint to refill? Blocks to rearrange? Pencils to sharpen?" I questioned, truly curious to how a big man like Jamie could be a primary teacher. I couldn't imagine Frank surrounded by bright-eyed youths teaching them their ABC's, sometimes not even if they were ou - I threw the line of thought away with a yank at a lock of tangled hair.

 

"I wouldna sharpen a crayon for those wee gremlins." Despite his tone the fondness in his eyes betrayed him. "It's Laoghaire that has me up, remember?" Jamie smoothed his shirt down the front then frowned at the mismatched buttonholes.

 

 _No._ "Remind me." My anxious fingers were tackling the disarray of knots when I noticed his blue eyed gaze of affection towards my unruly nest that no one had ever looked at in such a way. I dropped my hands to my lap to pick at the fuzz dotting the fabric instead.

 

"She's got to prep her room for her bitty ones, a birthday party, and she needs some help setting up her room as she's two months along now." He reached towards me, running his hand absentmindedly along my thigh and the rush of sensation at his touch did the opposite of soothing me this time.

 

Would it be rude to just run to the bathroom again?

 

Jamie continued, with an acute focus of a fox. "She still refuses to step on a ladder or bend over to pick a pencil fearin' the bairn will twist about and come out disjointed. Every one of us teachers has had to deal with her and now it's my turn. Though I dinna mind so much, she's a sweet thing just scairt is all."

 

"Still," I shuffled underneath his touch that by reflex only made his grasp tighter and my pulse higher. "That doesn't mean you have to get up this early." Jamie's face softened and I realized it must have been a conversation argued before with him and other me.

 

"I thought I'd make ye something resembling proper food. Then again - " Jamie looked appraisingly at me, "Ye do look a right mess this morning, _mo nighean donn."_ He leaned in and I fell back against the headboard, bringing my knees to my chest.

 

"I look like hell and if you so much as touch me we'll both be late for work." I did my best to give an authoritative presence, failing miserably as Jamie's hand found my waist, with a long finger slipping under my shirt, stroking at my skin.

 

"Ye look like beauty itself my wee porpintine. I'll take the punishment here and now. Bullseye aim ye promised, aye?" His voice was husky as his palm traveled hot across my back, pushing me towards him where I tried once more to delay what was becoming the impossible and my heart skittered at the possibilities to be had if I couldn't.

 

"Pull a muscle then, it will be another week of pain. Maybe an injection straight to the groin." My hands were locked at Jamie's forearm tight with muscle but I did nothing to push him away or bring him closer. It seemed my body was already bracing itself for a hard press of blazing Scot and excited at the prospect.

 

"I believe I chose punishment, Sassenach." Before I could register his movements, Jamie drew my legs down with a squeak from me and a painful groan from him as he twisted his muscles sharply, falling to his side and taking me down along with him.

 

_"Dìmeas an olc eadar sinn!"_

 

"I warned you -"

 

Jamie silenced me then with a throbbing kiss that coursed heavy in my blood, to the very tips of my fingers curled at his chest. From his throat to my lips rumbled a growl of cocky satisfaction and I responded by parting my mouth welcoming more.

 

So much for bloody self-restraint and boundaries.

 

We parted sharing the same gasp for air that caught in my throat as Jamie pressed his mouth to me again. Slowly this time, with a smile of scruff that scratched at my skin and a hand gripping my arse that had my teeth clasping around his bottom lip in retaliation. But that did little to stop him as he hummed in appreciation until I broke away.

 

"You are very single-minded for a schoolteacher." I breathed, not bothering to feign being cross." I hope it was worth the pain."

 

Jamie chuckled then jerked with a wince at the twinge he deserved both on his face and lower down. But despite the momentary pain he still sighed, _Worth it,_ as he brushed the hair from my face and kissed my nose. "Anything to make ye smile. Now make yerself presentable Dr. Beauchamp and I'll make ye a bit to eat."

 

As he left me to the kitchen, again with a hobble, I couldn't help but doubt my other selfs qualifications as a doctor if she had to deal with that man everyday. Then again, as I pressed my palms to my face there was indeed a smile painted wide and aching that cast out any feelings of guilt.

 

Almost, anyway. But the smile lingered still, one I hadn't felt in so many months and that confused me even more.

 

Dressed, I made my way to the kitchen, making a detour to the living room as Jamie began to croon off tune. I tried to figure out what was mine and his over the warbling. What piece of furniture was quibbled over and who won the fight. Was it with words or was it with manipulation masked in a kiss that christened the piece theirs under a woolen tartan throw?

 

My hands passed over a wooden tabletop with photoframes of strangers and rolling hills of heather, before coming to a bookcase filled to the brim and well loved it seemed. There were books of more then just wars and history and novels of classic English literature. These spoke of poetry ranging from Burns and Tennyson, to Neruda and Frost with a well worn Silverstein that had seen better days.

 

However, what I noticed most were the spines of faded brown leather, titles in french, classic greek and latin that had belonged to my Uncle Lamb all those years ago. As a child I would skim through these heavy books, memorizing the pages with the pictures and guessing at the secrets hidden away in their strange lettering, only ever having luck with the french. Now these books had markers scattered about between pages with perfectly written notations I still couldn't decipher. I wondered what type of scholar I was attached to in this universe that could read multiple languages, some being ancient, and next devour a shelf full of spandex wearing caped crusaders.

 

_______

 

After Jamie fed me, kissed me (I gave up trying to stop him), I loaded on to a rickety creak of a bus, late for work. I prepared myself for an even more formidable force then the one I could still feel along my waist and lips and even that final pinch of the arse. I prepared myself to see Geillis.

 

I had gathered enough courage to dip into my history of this life through my mobile. While I hadn't quite the fortitude to look back into the vault of photos (though that was quickly changing) I had looked through the messages to figure if Geillis was still who I knew her as.

 

Conversations where familiar. Centering on blaming each other over our indulgences of greasy food and drink, my bad taste in music and apparent trash opinions, her bad taste in all that was human - man, woman and once with Tom Christie.

 

Pictures between us were numerous and random as always, but the new additions were of her only known weakness - animals. A blackbird that Geillis was convinced held a human soul within itself that had been visiting her windowsill and a neighbors dog she was very near to kidnapping, and almost succeeded in doing so too. All in the norm of who she was to me. Then there was the endless teasing of Jamie and ours relationship. No matter what Jamie was everywhere.

 

As the bus came to a stop I began to feel the calming pull of the hospital A&E. The walls of white, the smell of bleach, the constant hum of ventilators to vending machines and always an overflow of patients in need.

 

______

 

Only an hour passed before she found me.

 

Where Jamie had the patience of a saint (as long as it didn't involve intimacy), Geillis was more the type to press your face against the floor, hair wrapped around her fist with a knee stabbing at the back. Information would be extracted by any means necessary. And as she cornered me in an empty hallway I had to remind myself that I took down a full grown man more then twice her size.

 

"I called ye."

 

"I know -"

 

"I had to cover for ye."

 

"Which I'm grateful for -"

 

"Grateful she says!" Geillis scoffed. "After the day ye missed, you better have ridden yer Scots cock to damnation."

 

"Christ, Geillis!" My face flushed as the hallway chose that moment to fill with people.

 

"Oh ye did!" Her expression flipped with a waggle of her brows at me.

 

"Still mad then?"

 

"I can't afford to be. It's you or wee Mary I have to talk to and I scare the lass to a stuttering. Besides after terror that ye missed I own yer soul now. That's the deal." Geillis smiled sweetly, poking her finger right below my collarbone.

 

"Is that all?" She nodded then pulled me flush to the wall to what I assumed was a collection of that debt, instead she asked -

 

"Now tell me all the dirty details about yer red thatched schoolboy and dinna skimp."

 

Her interest surprised me. She never wanted to know a sliver of a detail about mine and _the professor's_ sex life. Only ever my dreams and apparently now of the living embodiment himself.

 

"You like Jamie don't you?"

 

"That's a funny thing to ask. I was the one that told ye the first time you met him, fuck the bastard filthy. And then as I recall, when you were 'bout to leave with a face of shocking depravity," she grinned approvingly, "I took ye by the ear and said have him fuck ye something unholy.

 

"God Geillis." I couldn't help but laugh. "You are the little red devil on my shoulder aren't you?" I took a lock of her hair and twirled it up to resemble a horn.

 

"I only ever tell ye what yer heart needs."

 

"Maybe you are a witch?" Another silly theory that she could be the cause of it all had me chuckling.

 

"If I were I'd have better luck." Geillis shook her head. "No vicious wee blonde who doesn't know what she wants or a man who wanted to see the world just no with me."

 

"Oh Geillie -" my dearest friend was very much the same and like always it broke my heart.

 

"Forget your man tonight, let's go out together." She said, stopping she would consider words of pity. "Who knows when will get another chance. Anyday now yell have a ring the size of a sapphire to go with the lads bonny blues."

 

That was the final pound that my heart would except without proper alcohol.

 

"I knew you'd be the death of me today, Geillie."

 

______

 

Shift over, eyes heavy but a hungry stomach overriding everything, I walked out the hospital doors expecting to find Geillis waiting with impatience. I found Jamie sitting on a bench playing with his mobile instead.

 

I wasn't expecting him to walk me home it was always a solitary trek unless Geillis came over. I didn't think to call, that I even needed to.

 

I felt a soft push at my shoulders and turned to see Geillis' head on my shoulder.

 

"Dinna fash." She mumbled with a kind smile directed at Jamie as he walked towards us. "Raincheck?"

 

I didn't have a chance to answer, Jamie was with us in three long strides. He looked from her to me and gestured with his chin to Geillis.

 

"Want to eat with us lass? My treat." He was earnest in his offer. He liked Geillis too and I felt myself grow warm towards him that had nothing to do with his appearance. I couldn't remember a time my other man had ever spoken to Geillis past civil conversation, except the few times of the same back and forth jabber about Jacobites. She would talk with passion and Frank, being an impartial judge of history, would join her. The only time I ever saw them agree on something.

 

"Why not. A free meal and a cute ginger to carry me home when I'm too gone with drink to walk." She winked at me. Her plans wouldn't be changed.

 

"Good. How 'bout something sloppy that spills off yer plate with grease for you two physicians?"

 

"Perfect." Geillis cheered.

 

As we walked I noticed Jamie's hair was speckled making it shimmer under the moonlight.

 

"Wee Rabbie turned me to a unicorn today." He informed, swishing his hair back and forth in a sparkly drizzle to transform me as well.

 

"All that's missing is the horn." I touched the spot on his forehead moving away a wavy lock of copper hair.

 

"Not when we go home."

 

"Didn't get yer fill yesterday, young buck?" Geillis teased up ahead leaving Jamie confused and me waving off her comment.

 

After eating what Jamie described as, _The kind of food ye only eat with someone ye love,_ we deposited a very comatose Geillis and went slowly with minor stumbling steps home.

 

"So," Jamie ever so slightly slurred,"How has the ending of yer day been, Sassenach? Brighter I hope."

 

I blame all the bottles we left on the table (mostly to temper myself from his ever constant touch) for my drunken slip of tongue. "Why must you call me all these names?"

 

Jamie's mind wasn't as far gone however, and another warning sign flashed red for him.

 

"Different ways to say I love ye, Claire." His voice sounded restrained and he kept his gaze ahead. Where my mind faltered my body made up for. Taking control without my bidding, my hand grasped his that he squeezed fierce and wrapped my other arm around him.

 

I was starting to think he was a damn unicorn.

 

Around the corner of home, there was a dribble of water, barely a puddle and I walked forward with no hesitation, daring it to send me to the upside down, forgetting Jamie's hold on me if it tried. He suddenly held me flush to his side, pulling me up and over the water, setting me down with utter ease.

 

"No beasties today my Sassenach." Jamie kissed the top of my head leaving me in a daze of -

 

_What the hell did you say?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I don't know why the chapters are reading wrong but I'm too afraid to fix them (if they delete I woud riot!) But know there are no missing chapters. There's just 5 altogether so far.
> 
> *Sanasachd means healer. I didn't just majorly eff up Sassenach.
> 
> *Dìmeas an olc eadar sinn - damn the evil between us. Which I take as Frank.
> 
> *The blonde that Geillis is referring to is Annalise.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate this chapter.

Despite the embrace he held me in, the walk towards the flat Jamie called _ours_ was noticably awkward. Questions burned at our lips and seized the link between our hands fraught with tension as his thumb tapped an erratic beat against the back of my palm, sweating within his keeping. Though I had known Jamie in the tangible sense for only two days I knew what I had said, to unknowingly question the names he gave me from his heart and to dismiss them, wouldn't be shrugged off so easily. My own questions would have to wait.

 

I wouldn't have thought simple endearments could be so precious to a person. I had been _Darling,_ for years and never thought the word was anything more then a passing affection on the cheek, an imprint of soft, thin lips with the heady musk of cologne to linger about me and sting my eyes. I couldn't even remember the last time it was spoken to me without an, _I'm sorry,_ trailing after from the other side of the phone with a promise to amend the wrong only for it to be broken as well. It would leave me with a hollowness in the pit of my stomach, but only for a moment as I reminded myself that I was guilty of the same to Frank. Why did I have any right to be upset.

 

Jamie was though, and I could feel his gaze searching for who he knew me to be and a rise of panic began to trickle through my veins if he didn't keep to his word.

 

With a twist of a key and turn of a knob, through the door we crossed to a space of deceptive warmth that did little to thaw my blood. I was freed from Jamie's grip as he shedded himself of his coat, eyes still on me but mouth clamped shut. If his plan was to unnerve me, it was working.

 

I threw my coat to the back of the couch, almost tripping over my own feet - the inebriation was kicking in more forcefully now as I no longer had a hand to cling to - and headed for the room to rid myself of clothes that smelled of pungent antiseptic, heavily of grease, with a splash of drink being the only inviting scent. I wanted to throw myself beneath the covers to let the haven of sleep wash over me. Perhaps this time I'd wake to an empty bed - mine, alone - even though it was made for two. The thought left me chilled as opposed to what this limbo brought me, of ever present sea blue eyes always seeking mine.

 

But as Jamie's step came closer, I decided for the shower with a swivel of my heels. I closed the door then pulled at my clothes that scattered to the tile and turned the water on to a scalding degree that melted me to a boneless state, distracting me of my dilemma if only for a moment. There was only one problem.

 

This time I forgot to lock the door.

 

Submerged in a cascade of water I didn't hear Jamie until the door parted, releasing the steam that foggied up the glass and leaving me bared to his sight - all shining in pink with arms around myself offering a meager shield even though Jamie had seen it all - flat against the tile with him a ruddy flame, brushing along me skin to slippery skin. I was thoroughly trapped between a wall and a very large and looming, completely drenched and dripping, hard muscled Scot.

 

Very well played.

 

Jamie hadn't noticed my gaping expression as his head was bent with eyes closed in his own submersion, relishing the rushing heat of water until he tipped his head my way.

 

"Hello." Jamie called with a crooked grin. "Did I interrupt yer washing, _Sassenach?"_ While his voice was teasing, Jamie's eyes didn't waver from mine to linger downward, that wasn't what his intrusion was about. He was reaching out to me the only way he knew how to without breaking his word. That or I was being lulled to free myself of whatever he thought burdened me. I couldn't argue with his methods. Nor could I figure, with a brain ceasing to function, how to push him away without making matters worse. So I didn't.

 

"You're stealing all the hot water." It was the best my brain cells could muster as I raised my chin to show I wasn't the least bit bothered, yet my arms across my breast spoke otherwise that Jamie interpreted as a sign of a chill.

 

"Are ye cold still? I dinna think the water gets any hotter." He stretched his arm to turn the knob and grabbed a plentiful amount of my arse instead.

 

"Jamie!" I shrieked.

 

"What?" He asked in blue eyed innocence that flickered with a light that left a fluttering beneath my ribs down past my belly. The sensation only intensified when both Jamie's hands cupped the curve of my bottom and settled me softly between the bristly warmth of his hips that no longer had him flinching away in pain as my mark had faded to a dull splotch of yellow.

 

"Jamie." This time my voice was more a whisper lost in the water, his nose grazing against mine, as droplets of water fell from the strands of darkened cooper to my cheeks down to my lips. Jamie's hands slowly slid up my waist - leaving a shuddering of goosebumps in it's wake - to my arms still clasped around me and with a gentle pull, loosened my hold to lay my hands at his chest. I was pinned intimately so along the length of him, rousing me to a fervent blush that had me drowning in heat and calmed me of anxious thought all at once despite feeling faint. How could he do that?

 

Then Jamie's fingertips lightly traced up my neck to skim the line from my chin to temple, pushing away my flattened curls with a tenderness while mine twitched as his heart pulsed an even beat under my palm. My gaze locked at the steady heave of Jamie's chest rose to his, intense with sincerity and maybe that was my final undoing.

 

"If ye plan on keeping to yerself then the only thing I can do is cherish ye, _Claire_. By feeding ye, making ye laugh or the way that clears yer mind best. Just holding ye to me and calling ye all my heart feels for ye - _Mo sassenach, mo ghràidh..."_ Jamie's lips brushed along the sweep of my cheeks and brow between every word, their meaning becoming very clear to me. And then Jamie added with a small smirk that at any other time I would have wanted to stab my finger to if not for it's accuracy. "Leaving ye with no escape." He did know me very well.

 

"Just know ye can trust me whatever is plaguing ye."

 

I blame the alcohol, Jamie's close proximity overwhelming my better senses that I could feel with every soothing touch and kindness of voice that had me give the man the opportunity to press me for answers.

 

Maybe I just wanted to be closer to him.

 

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I replied honestly.

 

Jamie pulled away to look me straight in the eyes, his shining with a serious determination, even as his mouth curled at the corners of how absurd my statement sounded to him.

 

"If ye told me ye fell from the heavens with the light of the stars within ye, I'd believe you. If ye told me you and Geillis were a pair of witches who danced naked on _Samhain_ I'd say my suspicions were confirmed."

 

"It's not a joke!" I exclaimed, irrational as it was. I pushed away from Jamie, sliding the door to grab a towel hanging off to the side and wrapping it tight, only for a hand to whip me back around.

 

"Neither was I, Claire." Jamie bent to my level, confusion and concern etched deep in his face."I only meant nothing you could do or say could stop me from believing ye."

 

It wasn't his earnesty that had me crack. Only the need to shatter my own illusion that was too perfect to be real. To stop pretending this world had any foothold in reality.

 

So I did. I told Jamie in a rabid ramble of words that sputtered free and surely sounded delusional to his ear.

 

His face turned a horrid shade of sick.

 

I explained to Jamie that he was a complete stranger to me that I knew nothing of him or us.

 

Jamie grabbed a towel and wrapped it across his middle.

 

I told him all these things and reality was still intact, no crack in the walls, my vision going dim. Still him and me and probably an admittance to an asylum.

 

Jamie stood there like a pillar, unmoving and quiet, as water gathered at his feet, his face lowered away from me in the throes of strained contemplation and that's where I left him. Back into the bedroom, pulling at drawers of clothes that I tossed to the bed in a plaid flurry. Was there nothing of my own? A rustle of fabric and sharp intake of breath behind disturbed my frantic dressing and when I turned with a final tug of shirt there was Jamie, clothed and head finally raised to meet mine.

 

"You think I'm lying."

 

"Yer incapable of a fib without giggling."

 

I could!

 

"Then I must be insane."

 

"Yer not." He said firmly. "I would never think so."

 

"That I hit my head and am suffering a concussion."

 

"A wee bit," Jamie admitted. "I won't lie to ye but -"

 

"But what?" My palms were twisting the hem of my (his) shirt, knuckles turning white, shivering from the dampness still clinging to my skin. Jamie walked over to me, approaching me with a slow step that one shows an injured animal. His hands hovered above mine in question and I answered, slipping my shaking ones in his that stilled instantly at the stroking of his thumb over the backs of my palms, raised close to my chest.

 

"Tell me this." Jamie began with a soft breath, warm in a caress where our fingers twined. "Why of all places did ye find yerself here in this bed. Mine and no one else's?"

 

The shirt fit me loose and by the way his chin tilted, Jamie could plainly see the painful blush of embarrassment staining every inch of visible skin.

 

"Ye ken yer face is telling me all yer secrets and more so." Jamie arched his brow in curiosity, even so he gave me a gentle squeeze to coax the truth from me. "Speak. It canna be anymore preposterous then a dip in water to another world. Though," he mumbled low under his breath. "The more I think about it - I never did trust anything wet I couldna drink."

 

When Jamie put it that way, what was one more reveal. I only wished he were far across the room and I in another hemisphere. Preferably on the moon.

 

"I had - before all this," I twirled my finger in a loop. "Had been having dreams about you that were... vivid...quite so." I was glowing bright like a beacon and ready to burst into a million shards.

 

"Theses dreams, were they the kind that make ye squeak?" He asked in what he probably thought was a delicate choice of word. I didn't take it that way.

 

"I don't squeak!"

 

"Ye do. Encourages me." A chuckle was suppressed in a grunt, familiar to my hearing.

 

I knew it did.

 

"As ye know." Jamie read me with such an ease and cockiness maybe he did understand. But I asked again and probably would until I awoken to a hue dark of hazel.

 

"Do you really believe me?"

 

______

 

_Jamie_

 

 

"I do, Claire. Even if I don't understand it, I do." Jamie assured her, surprised at how convinced his voice sounded.

 

Even as he worried about his own state of mind that he wasn't rushing Claire off to the hospital to scan her brain for fractures or growths pressuring within her skull.

 

But relieved at how for the first time in the past two days he saw his Claire reflecting back at him, trust surging in her eyes with her distress cast to him. The keeper of her heart, protector of any ill harm that came her way.

 

Aye, he believed her.

 

…

 

Come morning though, he might think differently.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I ended the last chapter a certain way so I could push the plot further along (Jamie was always going to know) but once I started writing this one I couldn't get the line where she questions Jamie's gaelic out of my head. He wouldn't let that go, a definite change would have been apparent in him and the original outline for this chapter (Q's directed at Jamie not the other way around) just didn't support that no matter how I twisted it. So I spent what? Two weeks writing everything else but this story and while I don't think I earned these emotions (everything works better in my head) I hope through the faults whatever I have here is entertaining.
> 
> *Cracks in the wall is a reference to Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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